FBI Says Most Terror Investigations Are Focused On US Citizens, Not Foreigners

According to FBI director James Comey, the majority of the open investigations into terrorism that the FBI is currently working on involve US citizens, not foreign agents in the United States. This seems at odds with the administration’s claims that to keep America safe we have to close off our borders. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Transcript of the above video:

FBI Director James Comey may be one of the most hated people amongst Democratic circles, certainly those that supported Hillary Clinton, but just this week he actually said something that made a lot of sense and kind of shifts the focus on the U.S. war on terrorism. He said during a Senate hearing earlier this week … Senator Patrick Leahy asked him a question about what the FBI is doing in terms of terrorism, what kind of people they’re looking at, and James Comey was bluntly honest and said the majority of open terrorism cases that we at the FBI have … They’re not investigating foreigners. We’re not investigating Muslims. We’re investigating United States citizens for suspected terrorism.

Now, both the CIA and the FBI in the past have said that homegrown domestic terrorism in the United States is the biggest terrorist threat that we face. It’s not Muslims coming in from other countries. It’s not the people that Donald Trump is trying to ban from coming into the United States, although Comey admitted he was not going to address that issue. It’s U.S. citizens. Sure, some of them happen to be Muslim. Some of them may subscribe to the extremist ideologies that we see in ISIS and al-Qaeda. That’s a given. For the most part, it is hardcore right-wing extremists that pose one of the greatest threats to U.S. national security, and those aren’t people hopping a border fence. Those aren’t people coming over here disguised as someone else. These are people born and raised in the United States.

Again, what Comey told us during this hearing is not anything new. This is something the FBI has been telling us for years. The Southern Poverty Law Center that tracks and monitors hate groups and right-wing extremism, violent right-wing extremism, has been telling us this for years. We know this, but it is good to have this kind of confirmation from the FBI that they are taking this threat seriously. After all, it wasn’t ISIS that walked into a predominantly black church and started shooting people. It wasn’t ISIS that walked into an elementary school in the Northeast and started shooting people. It wasn’t ISIS that bombed Oklahoma City. Those were homegrown terrorists, some right-leaning, some maybe not. It doesn’t matter their political ideology at this point. What matters is that for years we have been ignoring the fact that we have a lot of extremists here in the United States, and hopefully the FBI is taking this seriously. Hopefully, they’re cracking down on this and trying to prevent whatever attacks these people are trying to do.

You know, while the Trump administration tries to distract us with things like the Atlanta terrorism, I guess, bombing, with the Bowling Green massacre, things that never actually happened, at least there is one branch of government … or government agency, I should say … that understands the real threat. The threat are right-wing terrorists who take over a wildlife refuge in Oregon or who point automatic weapons at federal agents trying to get them to just pay their bills. They’ve been bilking taxpayers … The Bundy boys have been bilking taxpayers for millions of dollars for a couple decades. We just wanted them to pay their fair share. Instead, those people were met by violent right-wing extremists who pointed automatic rifles at them from that bridge, and the government backed down. We let the terrorist win. We always say we don’t negotiate with terrorists, but they damn sure did it with those right-wing terrorists known as the Bundy family.

I hope the FBI is taking this seriously. I hope they’re investigating, and I hope they make some arrests. It’s one thing to constantly be afraid of this Middle Eastern bogeyman that may or may not show up one day, or the immigrants coming over the border who, as Trump says, want to rape and kill us. It’s a completely different thing to understand that the real threat of terrorism might be your next-door neighbors, or the people down the street, or the people in your office building. Those are the ones that the FBI is looking at and taking seriously, and it’s time for the Trump administration to do the same.